16-year-old Huddersfield weaver Dora Thewlis on arrest was catapulted on to the tabloid front-pages as 'Baby Suffragette'. Her life was transformed.

Rejecting the deadening conventions of their Victorian elders, the rebel girls demanded new freedoms and new rights.

They took their suffrage message out to the remotest Yorkshire dales and fishing harbours, to win Edwardian hearts and minds.

The caravan tour started in Whitby in August 1908. Suffragists parked the van right by the water's edge, alongside fair booths and stalls. A picture poscard shows a Edwardian holiday crowd gathered round, curious to see a woman speaker in such a remote spot. From Whitby, the cart-horse plodded up into the high York Moors. At Goatland, the suffragists bravely held another open-air meeting, and then made their way out to the coast and seaside resorts like Scarborough.

Dora Thewlis arrest, March 1907, was later turned into a picture postcard by Shamrock postcards. Click photo to enlarge it

Rebel Girls shows how this daring campaigning shifted from community suffragettes to militant mavericks, like Leonora Cohen of
Leeds. Leonora, who died in 1978 aged 105, lived long enough to see new fascination with suffrage history.

Regular terrors - review of Rebel Girls by Alison Light published
in the London Review of Books(Jan 2007)

Leonora Cohen, aged 100, on front cover of Radio Times, 1974, for BBC TV drama Shoulder to Shoulder.
Click photo to enlarge it